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Four short links: 10 May 2013

By Nat Torkington
May 10, 2013

The Remixing Dilemma — summary of research on remixed projects, finding that (1) Projects with moderate amounts of code are remixed more often than either very simple or very complex projects. (2) Projects by more prominent creators are more generative. …

Four short links: 6 May 2013

By Nat Torkington
May 6, 2013

Nautilus — elegantly-designed science web ‘zine. Includes Artificial Emotions on AI, neuro, and psych efforts to recognise and simulate emotions. A Short Essay on 3D Printing — This hands-off approach to culpability cannot last long. If you design something to …

Numbers never lie…unless you’re talking social media

By Rob Eagar
April 30, 2013

Back in college, I took a class on statistics and never forgot the first lesson my professor taught us, which was, “Anyone can manipulate numbers to make them mean whatever they want.” I see this point magnified today by the …

Go native, go big, and go deep

By Zigurd Mednieks
April 29, 2013

Apps have to get bigger and more ambitious. A key question for the developer community is how do you create big, integrated, multi-functional, configurable apps for the mobile enterprise? Curiously, Facebook is providing some answers by not using HTML5 and …

Digital publishing and the loss of intimacy

By François Joseph de Kermadec
April 9, 2013

Reading used to be an intimate experience. Even Amazon, the pioneer in digital publishing, branded its Kindle with a child reading alone under a tree. Books were specially designed to disappear into the background as much as possible, helped by …

The book as a standard of quality

By François Joseph de Kermadec
March 13, 2013

Publishers have long commandeered respect for the quality of their work. Traditional processes may be cumbersome, reliant as they are on an infinity of minute, specialised steps, but they have helped maintain consistently high standards, at ever-lower prices. Authors may …

If followers can sponsor updates on Facebook, social advertising has a new horizon

By Alex Howard
March 7, 2013

This week, I found that one of my Facebook updates received significantly more attention that others I’ve posted. On the one hand, it was a share of an important New York Times story focusing on the first time a baby …

How can we redefine the book?

By François Joseph de Kermadec
March 4, 2013

A book may no longer be a physical object, but its ordinary definition remains straightforward as a “written composition that is intended for publication”. Traditional or digital, we feel confident in our ability to recognise a book. We barely remember …

Losing the book as a symbol

By François Joseph de Kermadec
February 20, 2013

Transitioning the publishing industry to digital technologies involves lifting the words out of printed pages, and pouring them into the amorphous containers we call ebooks. Books are no longer the tangible, brick-shaped presence they were: they must, instead, be stretched …

Money matters most in book marketing

By Rob Eagar
February 19, 2013

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll revealed that four out of five Facebook users have never bought a product or service as a result of advertising or comments on the social network site. In addition, researchers at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute found that …

O’Reilly’s journey to EPUB 3

By Sanders Kleinfeld
February 7, 2013

We at O’Reilly are very pleased to announce that we have officially upgraded to EPUB 3, and ebook bundles purchased from oreilly.com will now include EPUB 3 files, in addition to Mobi and PDF files. All O’Reilly ebooks released in …

Ebooks and the future of research

By François Joseph de Kermadec
February 6, 2013

Knowledge cannot progress unless it is aware of its past: a knowledge-seeker must reference the works of previous generations. Literary scholars return to manuscripts, musicians to partitions, artists to museums… The continued availability of reference works underpins our entire research …

Selling direct starts with community

By Kaushik Sampath
February 5, 2013

“Why would I need to know who buys my books?” — some publishers have asked (and still are asking) this question. “I have my distribution channels and am quite happy to give them my ebooks too.” If this statement surprises …

PDF is still “better”

By Nellie McKesson
January 30, 2013

A few weeks ago, I surprised myself. I had decided to learn a new code language, and O’Reilly of course has a great little book about this particular language, so I pulled up the eBook files, and almost without thinking, …

Visualization of the Week: Identify your insiders, outsiders, connectors and gateways

By Jenn Webb
January 30, 2013

WolframAlpha announced an upgrade to its Personal Analytics for Facebook platform that allows users to visualize a number of aspects of their Facebook ecosystem. John Burnham outlines the updates on the WolframAlpha blog, noting that the popular visualization from the …

Forking the book

By Adam Hyde
January 22, 2013

As one of the first mass produced industrial artifacts the book remains a solid cultural signifier of stability. That aura is pretty strong and attractive and makes it pretty hard to think about books as being anything other than static …

Four short links: 9 January 2013

By Nat Torkington
January 9, 2013

BitCoin in 2012, By The Numbers — Over the past year Bitcoin’s value when compared to the US Dollar, and most other currencies, increased steadily, though there was a large spike and subsequent dip in August. Interestingly, the current market …

Why isn’t social media more like real life?

By Jim Stogdill
December 19, 2012

I finally got around to looking at my personal network graph on Linkedin Labs the other day. It was a fun exercise and I got at least one interesting insight from it. Take a look at these two well defined …

Four short links: 13 December 2012

By Nat Torkington
December 13, 2012

Top 10 Chinese Internet Memes of 2012 — most are political, unlike Overly Attached Girlfriend. Evaporative Cooling — thoughtful piece about the tendency of event quality to trend down unless checked by invisible walls. (via Hacker News) What Was It …

Books as apps deserve serious consideration

By Chris Rechtsteiner
December 6, 2012

While following FutureBook 12 recently (#fbook12) a topic came to mind that I feel needs to gain additional traction: Books as apps play an important role vs. existing ebook platforms. This is a frightening future for many in publishing (and for many …

Four short links: 12 November 2012

By Nat Torkington
November 12, 2012

Teaching Programming to a Highly Motivated Beginner (CACM) — I don’t think there is any better way to internalize knowledge than first spending hours upon hours growing emotionally distraught over such struggles and only then being helped by a mentor. …

Four short links: 7 November 2012

By Nat Torkington
November 7, 2012

A Slower Speed of Light — game where you control the speed of light and discover the wonders of relativity. (via Andy Baio) Facebook Demetricator — removes all statistics and numbers from Facebook’s chrome (“37 people like this” becomes “people …

Commerce Weekly: Square’s big moves

By Jenn Webb
October 25, 2012

Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the commerce space this week. Square gets international, plans major growth; PayPal Here hits retail Square made a couple of big move announcements this week. First, the company literally will …

Now available: Big Data Now 2012 Edition

By Mac Slocum
October 22, 2012

In the first edition of our free Big Data Now anthology, the O’Reilly team tracked the birth and early development of data tools and data science. Now, with the second edition, we’re seeing what happens when big data grows up: …

Strata Week: A realistic look at big data obstacles

By Jenn Webb
October 12, 2012

Here are a few stories from the data space that caught my attention this week. Big obstacles for big data For the latest issue of Foreign Policy, Uri Friedman put together a summarized history of big data to show “[h]ow …

Commerce Weekly: Will NYC taxis get Square?

By Jenn Webb
October 11, 2012

Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the commerce space this week. Square may be courting cabs Square not only is gearing up to launch in Starbucks stores in November — it may also be looking to …

Commerce Weekly: More brands throw in with Merchant Customer Exchange

By Jenn Webb
October 4, 2012

Here are the commerce stories that caught my eye this week. MCX’s mobile payment vision draws in more big names The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) got a boost this week as several more big brands joined the mobile payments network. …

Commerce Weekly: An early look at who’s who in Passbook

By Jenn Webb
September 27, 2012

Here are the commerce stories that caught my attention this week. Passbook’s early merchants Apple’s iOS 6 launched last week, bringing the Passbook feature to iPhones, and merchants from all walks of industry have started jumping on board. Target was …

Commerce Weekly: Big data in retail

By Jenn Webb
September 20, 2012

Here are a few stories from the commerce space that caught my attention this week: Mom and pops sidelined by big data? Gary Hawkins at the Harvard Business Review took a look this week at marketing and research in the …

Commerce Weekly: Google Wallet vs Apple Passbook

By Jenn Webb
August 30, 2012

Here are a few stories from the commerce space that caught my attention this week. Google prepares its Wallet to compete with iOS 6 Robin Dua, Google’s head of product management for Google Wallet, participated in a video interview (embedded …

New life for used ebooks

By Joe Wikert
July 31, 2012

This post originally appeared on Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog (“The Used Ebook Opportunity“). This version has been lightly edited. I’ve got quite a few ebooks in two different accounts that I’ve read and will never read again. I’ll bet …

You still need your own website

By Mac Slocum
July 3, 2012

Brett Slatkin's hope for a federated social web hasn't worked out as expected, so he's shifting perspective from infrastructure to user behavior. Here he explains why you shouldn't abandon your website for third-party platforms.

You still need your own website

By Mac Slocum
July 3, 2012

Brett Slatkin's hope for a federated social web hasn't worked out as expected, so he's shifting perspective from infrastructure to user behavior. Here he explains why you shouldn't abandon your website for third-party platforms.

Commerce Weekly: Streamlining Facebook's ads

By Jenn Webb
June 21, 2012

Payvment launches a one-click Facebook ad service, PayPal revamps its website with consumers and mobile in mind, and a Best Buy exec says in-store mobile use has a scale issue. (Commerce Weekly is produced as part of a partnership between O'Reilly and PayPal.)

Four short links: 18 June 2012

By Nat Torkington
June 18, 2012

What Facebook Knows (MIT Tech Review) -- Analyzing the 69 billion friend connections among those 721 million people showed that the world is smaller than we thought: four intermediary friends are usually enough to introduce anyone to a random stranger. and our close friends strongly sway which information we share, but overall their impact is dwarfed by the collective...

Visualization of the Week: 30 years of tech IPOs

By Audrey Watters
May 25, 2012

This week's visualization comes from The New York Times and compares the last 30 years of tech IPOs (hint: watch for the big blue dot).

Visualization of the Week: 30 years of tech IPOs

By Audrey Watters
May 25, 2012

This week's visualization comes from The New York Times and compares the last 30 years of tech IPOs (hint: watch for the big blue dot).

Four short links: 25 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 25, 2012

Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss -- transcript of a thoughtful music industry insider considering the effect of the net on the business. The other problem? I’ve been expecting for years now to see aggregate revenue flowing to artist increase. Disintermediation promised us this. It hasn’t happened. Everywhere I look artists seem to be working more...

Commerce Weekly: Facebook continues its mobile acquisition spree

By Jenn Webb
May 24, 2012

Facebook puts its IPO money to use, seven strategies to help retail businesses survive "showrooming," and grocery shopping sans checkout lines. (Commerce Weekly is produced as part of a partnership between O'Reilly and PayPal.)

Four short links: 14 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 14, 2012

Shiri = Japanese Robotic Ass (YouTube) -- I couldn't watch after 2m30s or so when he starts slapping the robot ass. I never imagined a butt as UI. I eagerly await the hobbyist version, the Arduino Ass Shield. (via Ed Yong) Facebook Tests 'Pay to Promote' Tool (BBC) -- pay to raise prominence of your message, feature being tested...

Four short links: 7 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 7, 2012

Liquid Feedback -- MIT-licensed voting software from the Pirate Party. See this Spiegel Online piece about how it is used for more details. (via Tim O'Reilly) Putting Gestures Into Objects (Ars Technica) -- Disney and CMU have a system called Touché, where objects can tell whether they're being clasped, swiped, pinched, etc. and by how many fingers. (via BoingBoing)...

Four short links: 27 April 2012

By Nat Torkington
April 27, 2012

The Third Industrial Revolution (The Economist) -- A number of remarkable technologies are converging: clever software, novel materials, more dexterous robots, new processes (notably three-dimensional printing) and a whole range of web-based services. The factory of the past was based on cranking out zillions of identical products: Ford famously said that car-buyers could have any colour they liked, as...

The New Desktop Paradigm: Blame the Success of Linux on the Desktop

By Caitlyn Martin
April 26, 2012

The new Windows 8 Metro desktop, the latest incarnation of Mac OSX, Android, Ubuntu's Unity desktop and GNOME 3, love them or hate them, all came about because of the success of Linux on the desktop.

Commerce Weekly: Facebook's shopping spree continues

By Jenn Webb
April 19, 2012

Facebook buys into e-commerce, Jason Calacanis opines on Apple's entry into mobile payments, and survey results look good for mobile commerce. (Commerce Weekly is produced as part of a partnership between O'Reilly and PayPal.)

The sorry state of ebook samples, and four ways to improve them

By Joe Wikert
April 13, 2012

Joe Wikert: "My gut tells me the revenue missed by not converting samples into sales is a much larger figure than the revenue lost to piracy. And yet, the publishing industry spends a small fortune every year in DRM but treats samples as an afterthought."

The sorry state of ebook samples, and four ways to improve them

By Joe Wikert
April 13, 2012

Joe Wikert: "My gut tells me the revenue missed by not converting samples into sales is a much larger figure than the revenue lost to piracy. And yet, the publishing industry spends a small fortune every year in DRM but treats samples as an afterthought."

Top Stories: April 2-6, 2012

By Mac Slocum
April 6, 2012

This week on O'Reilly: Mike Loukides explained why problems arise when data is taken out of social contexts, Robbie Allen looked at six ways insight can be extracted from datasets, and Mike Hendrickson analyzed the current state of the computer book market.

Visualization of the Week: Clustering your social graph

By Audrey Watters
April 6, 2012

This week's visualization clusters your Facebook friends based on shared education, location, occupation, and interests.

Visualization of the Week: Clustering your social graph

By Audrey Watters
April 6, 2012

This week's visualization clusters your Facebook friends based on shared education, location, occupation, and interests.

State of the Computer Book Market, part 4: The Languages

By Mike Hendrickson
April 6, 2012

In this fourth post of "State of the Computer Book Market," we look at programming languages and drill in on each language area.

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